Reason: This sentence teaches us to keep a certain distance from villains to avoid being influenced by them.
This chapter ***26 from The Analects of Confucius Yang Huo introduces Confucius' moral education thought, Confucius' further explanation of benevolence, the problem of mourning for parents for three years, and the difference between a gentleman and a villain.
Extended data
To understand this sentence, we must first understand the concept of "villain". There are 24 "little people" in chapter 23 of The Analects of Confucius. In fact, most of these "little people" can be understood as ordinary people or ordinary people, which is another class relative to adults and scholars. And the word "raise" here refers to the meaning of getting along.
Therefore, the full text "only women are difficult to raise, if they are close, they will not be grandchildren, and if they are far away, they will complain", which probably means: if you stand from the perspective of men, the relationship with women is difficult to handle; From the official's point of view, it is difficult to deal with the relationship with ordinary people. Because they are too close to them, they don't know how to be humble. If they are too far away, they will resent it.
So it can be seen that there is a key word "shou" in this sentence of Confucius. Who keeps so many concubines and servants? Of course, it is the rich and powerful literati class, which is actually a problem encountered by these people. Confucius refers specifically to "concubines" and "maids and servants" of some literati families, not to all women and maids and servants in general.
Many people will understand ancient Chinese according to the modern literal meaning, or take it out of context in order to demonstrate their views. For example, if a man does not do it for himself, the devil takes the hindmost (from Mencius wholeheartedly), in which the word "Wei" has two pronunciations, but the correct pronunciation is the second one. Here, "Wei" is a verb, which means that if people don't practice their virtues, then heaven will prevail.